'Remember When' is the Lowest Form of Conversation (12.11.2009)

How unequivocally strange
To stand before someone who once owned you completely
And recognize nothing of them at all

I was utterly unprepared
For the quick flash of the familiar
In your eyes

‘Remember when’ is futile—agonizing
Letting go, just to watch it all disappear into the ether
As if it never was
Is harder still

Do you remember….?
A dozen years of hope and love and sweat and dreams
Four thousand nights spent in one anothers’ arms
Four thousand days arriving home to your smile

You once walked into a storm
To proclaim your love for me, writ large
The first of so very many of my storms
You weathered

I donned the dress I swore I’d never wear
Wreathed myself in the vestments of
A life I never wanted
It was so much more than I could have dreamed

How ironic—how prophetic
The omission, the inscription that bound us
((See, I will not forget you))
I have written your name on my heart

The snapshots are all boxed up
Hidden in the far corner of the highest shelf
Cast aside with all the many things
That are not to be remembered

It is difficult to hold onto a mirage
Just as you draw near, try to grasp it
It collapses into insubstantial shimmers

They say the price of love is loss
I have gladly borne the cost
But it grows wearisome
To be the sole bearer of this historical record

I once kissed you, told you I loved you
Walked out our door
Were that I could so easily say goodbye
To the ghost of the boy that I once loved.

'And when you're sick you seem to think you've failed eternally...'

I found a ray of hope and inspiration in the unlikeliest of places recently, in the midst of a very dark time. However, I believe sometimes things find you of their own accord—sometimes things you don't even know you're looking for find you just when you need them the most.

Within the last nine months, two of my three siblings have attempted suicide. My brother—my bipolar, alcoholic, diabetic best friend in all the world—tried to kill himself in January of this year. And just about nine months later, my baby sister overdosed. She is okay physically; the rest of it will take time, and I can only hope that she will survive it. I’d like to think that this is it: we’re past the crisis point, we’ll get help and things will be okay. However, I thought that the first time round with my brother, and during what may have been the most terrifying night of my life, I ended up being the one who had him committed to the psych ward again in June. There are moments when this world is quite literally hell.

I have struggled with major depressive disorder for many years. You would never know it, were you to meet any one of us on the street. One of us is just a few years away from a PhD in astrophysics. Two of us are professionals, and more importantly (most importantly), parents of little boys. All three of us are bright and funny; independent and strong: we are the odd, irreverent, friendly next door neighbors you’d like to kick back and shoot the shit with. We come from your standard, marginally dysfunctional, typical upper-middle-class family. We have parents who love us and support us; we have friends that do the same. We don’t walk around rending our garments and gnashing our teeth. And we are just a few of the many faces of this illness.

We are scarred, but our scars do not define us… instead they are reminders of what we have survived, and we are learning (we will learn) to wear them as badges that don’t single us out as different; instead, they say, “Here we are. You are not alone. We are just like you.”

We are lost. We are afraid. We are hopeful. And we are grateful… we are grateful to have each other, to have made it this far, and we are grateful to you. Every one of you who has the courage to stand up and be heard, despite a stigma that is still very real.

Thank you. THANK YOU for talking about it—for helping remove the shame and the stigma. Thank you for giving so many the courage to speak out. Thank you for giving so many of us a voice, and for always, always reminding us that we are not alone.

The Buddha

I have a seven-year-old mancub. I also have a small collection of Buddha statues. When the little man was an even littler man, anything that was supposed to be human, but was in fact not human, wigged him out: statues, figurines, his grandmother's electronic Santa with the moving arm... after an (ill-advised) visit to the art museum at the age of four, it turned out that even sarcophagi would do it.

I'm divorced, and his father and I share joint custody. So when the Bub was coming home, I'd have to move the Buddha statues out of sight. One particularly large one (about a foot and a half tall) really freaked him out. He's a fairly philosophical little shit (meant in the most affectionate possible way), and one day he was asking me about Jesus and God and whatnot. I tend to be pretty non-traditional and anti-organized religion, and take bits and pieces of philosophies that appeal to me to mold into my own personal ideology.

So we're having this chat, and finally it occurs to me that here's a way I can kill two birds with one stone: explain the basic concept of a God to a very small child, and stop having to move the damn statues constantly. So I told him that Jesus and God and the Buddha are all basically like superheros of the soul.

The Buddha statue has been sitting next to my front door, keeping watch, ever since.

and so we begin...

I leave a lot of things left unsaid in this life. I hold my heartbreaks close and my secrets closer, because I have always been the strong one, and the strong ones don't go around spilling their guts—they pay people to listen to that shit. But sometimes— sometimes—you have to let that shit out in order to let it go.